For music fans who wish some rapper or rocker would bring back protest songs, preferably the kind that have a phrase like "this is a protest song" or "f*** the man" somewhere in the title, lest we inadvertently miss the message as we go about our daily lives protesting 24/7 in our own jobs while the radio plays quietly in the background, here is your semi-regular reminder: There are protest songs everywhere you look and listen. Still. Today. Right now. But very few of them announce themselves as protest songs. One of the cardinal rules of writing: Show, don't tell. Good songwriters know that rule. They call their protest songs things like, oh, "PYNK." DAVID PORTER, the legendary Memphis songwriter/producer, lived and worked through that allegedly golden age of pop music protest, the '60s, and was an essential contributor to it with titles like "SOUL MAN," "I THANK YOU" and "HOLD ON, I'M COMIN'." Titles that don't often come up when '60s protest music is discussed. Which was partly on purpose. "There was an underground-railroad kind of messaging in music that was quite prevalent in song," Porter tells writer TONYAA WEATHERSBEE (in the wonderful journal THE BITTER SOUTHERNER). "If you would listen to the lyrics in an emotional way, you would get the feeling." It's a great interview, combined with a good analysis of how pop music messaging works. Sometimes you have to listen hard to get the feeling. Sometimes you have to be paying attention, and not just to the song. Because you, the listener, are part of the protest, and you have to do some of the work. But, goddamn, they're everywhere these days. This, for example, is good hip-hop protest song. This is a good country protest song. This is a good jazz protest song. Turn on the radio. There are lots more, and most aren't quite so obvious... I just told you all that rather than showing you. Apologies... This is good protesting (or maybe not; maybe it's recognition of a plain truth): CMT's ARTISTS OF THE YEAR special, airing live at 8 pm ET tonight, has an all-female lineup of honorees, including CARRIE UNDERWOOD, MIRANDA LAMBERT, MAREN MORRIS, KELSEA BALLERINI and LORETTA LYNN... Half of all new guitar players are women, according to FENDER, which is in a position to know. The guitar company's CEO, ANDY MOONEY, tells ROLLING STONE that the industry attributed this to the "TAYLOR SWIFT factor" for a while, but the trend has persisted even as Swift has moved on from primarily guitar-based music... At the BET HIP-HOP AWARDS (pre-taped and aired Tuesday night), ANDERSON .PAAK honors the late MAC MILLER, and VIC MENSA does not honor the late XXXTENTACION... Dust off your old 128k files. WINAMP is coming back. (But what about the skins?)... RIP MARLEY G, GARY YOUNG, ALFRED HUBAY and PAUL ALLEN.